Whoa, Apple just sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” The guns are out.
Steve Jobs’ biting take on the lawsuit:

Whoa, Apple just sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” The guns are out.

Steve Jobs’ biting take on the lawsuit:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

We’re digging up what exactly HTC is in trouble over, with Apple merely stating it’s related to the “iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” However, it’s worth noting Apple won a fairly huge multitouch patent just a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re nailing HTC for twice as many patent infringements as they busted Nokia on in that countersuit.

Apple’s original set of iPhone interface patents were actually fairly limited when you drill down, but we’ll see pretty shortly what, precisely, they’re suing HTC over. Which should give us a pretty good idea of whether or not this just the first of many lawsuits, since HTC’s not exactly the only other multitouch game in town.

The terse press release, in full:

advertisement

Apple Sues HTC for Patent Infringement

CUPERTINO, Calif. March 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall Apple® today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone®, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide.